Benito Mussolini was the recognized leading dictator of Europe when Hitler was a still a local politician leading a group of thugs against the Weimar Republic. Mussolini had solidified his power across all of Italy through murder, blackmail, and slander campaigns against Italy's press, politicians, and leftists.

Adolf Hitler had completed Anschluss with Austria and now was looking towards lands not traditionally part of “Greater Germany.” The Sudetenland, a narrow strip of mountainous land in Czechoslovakia, held a predominantly ethnic German population on the border with Germany.